Be All My Sins Remembered
by FluffleNeCharka
Summary: Mistakes haunt and hurt, never forgiven and never forgotten. Fillmore digs into Ingrid's past as the stoic girl begins falling apart, and the truth might break their friendship if it doesn't break her first.
1. Chapter 1

Some days, when the chase is over and she and Fillmore are gasping for breath, for a moment, she feels _clean_.

She remembers what it was like to be innocent, upright, moral – whatever you want to call it – when she was a different person altogether, in another world wholly removed from the here and now. She remembers things that are good, are even wholesome, the way she laid in the autumn leaves and laughed and the icy mornings she and her sister would job together. She recalls gym class, preschool days spent chasing some boy whose name she's long forgotten, and kindergarten spent coloring with a girl who wore her hair in four pigtails. Memories play across her vision like soothing poetry, trying to take away the parts of her life that she regrets. When she is exhausted, victorious, alongside him she feels like she's normal for the briefest few moments in her life. Not normal as in ordinary, normal as in…

Well, Ingrid's not sure what she means. Happy? Good enough? Real? Something between all three, most likely. It's complicated. She hasn't atoned for the whole ordeal, but she feels like she makes progress when they do this. When they haul in the suspect and stop the pain and crime running rampant at this school she feels a little bit of the dirtiness leave her. She's never going to forget, as hard as she's tried. All she can hope for is moments of clarity and calm in the string of oddities that's been her life. Slowly, she's learning how live again in that time that comes after the aftermath, that awful period where everyone wants her to forget and so does she. Her father calls it moving forward. She calls it denial, at least in her head. Out loud she doesn't mention it. Maybe it's because then someone might see how she pushes herself to make up for what happened, and then they might try to stop her from working so hard.

Restraint is for those who aren't dirty. It's a luxury reserved for the people who don't lay awake fighting off their own conscience. Of course, it's not every night, but it's not as rare as people would think. Then again, even her family doesn't know the whole story. Ingrid's never been good at saying what she feels. She can't put it all into words. She wants to. Maybe it would help her come clean. She lays in her bed some nights and thinks over her options, over what she could do to make all of this go away. All she wants is to be able to look at herself in a mirror without feeling angry, to be able to be proud of herself again and smile without forcing it. The only person she knows who induces these emotions is Fillmore.

But he can never know. If he knew, she'd lose him.

She knows she can't take that. Neither can she take the entire thing tearing her apart from the inside out. Trapped between two warring sensations, the need to be honest and the need to lie, she has been indecisive for as long as she can be. She's growing up, now, a seventh grader with a brand new life, isn't it time she faced all this? The debate is a never ending circular argument in her head that goes nowhere very slowly. Maybe she's not as grown up as they all say she is. Wise beyond her years, Folsom commented once, not noticing the way Ingrid's father tensed visibly at the comment, not knowing the significance of her own words. In his reaction Ingrid sees she has never been forgiven. Things like this are never forgotten, never forgiven, corrupt and vile and all those other words she wasn't supposed to know back then. All the guilt and filthy feelings rush back into her in that moment.

Only Fillmore saw the way her eyes flashed in a whirlwind of emotion. He was the only one who saw the way her fists clenched at her side. For a moment she wasn't there, she was in another time, another place, and dark blue eyes were looking into hers as the rain came down around them. She remembered the way their breath had come out in foggy bursts in front of them. It was so cold that eventually it had turned into a rain and snow hybrid that they huddled in, too afraid of the consequences to return home, too cold to stay out here forever and too sentimental to leave each other's side. She blinked and returned to the office, to the parent student principal meeting and the award she would be receiving for her service to the school. Fillmore would be getting the same thing at the opening ceremony for the school's 'Spring Fling' dance. She looked over at him and knew she was caught in her lapse of reality.

She has had that same semi-psychic connection with someone before, an eternity ago, in a life that almost seemed like it couldn't be hers, that she wished wasn't hers.

When this meeting ends he's going to talk to her, ask her what's wrong. And she's going to struggle because lying to him hurts. Some part of her desperately thinks he might _understand_, in that way no one else does. No one understands her as it is. Her actions have always created confusion, her explanations, even more so. Only her partner has ever really grasped everything that she is, snark and harsh words and a combination of fierce loyalty and trust issues. Fillmore knows Ingrid in a way nobody has in a very long time. She hates lying to him. He's like family. He's the one person she knows she can truly trust. But she doesn't want to lose him; she can't take any more loss and pain in her life. So she'll say nothing is up and he'll keep pressing it and eventually they'll fight. A little while later he'll come over to her place, tell her he's sorry for butting into her business and they'll eat ice cream out of a carton while watching TV.

And though she'll smile and laugh at all the right moments, Ingrid will still feel dirty when the night is over.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note:** Okay, I'm shameless. I admit it, I'm deliberately trying to keep what happened unknown to the audience (and Fillmore) for as long as I can, but I really want to hear people's guesses. Especially since I'm throwing out hints left and right. Is it bad form for an author to request her reader's theories?

* * *

She's never quite gotten over it, over _him_.

Memories were strange things, triggered by the most random of settings and objects. The smell of burning wood, the taste of Oreos they had shared, those days when the atmospheric pressure and clouds work together to create light that's more gray and cold than bright and warm… In the winter at X, when a pipe bursts and the liquid lets off waves of steam in the morning sunlight, she sees his blood and the light of street lamps and is reminded. She can control what she says and does in the future, but the past is written in stone. She can lie to the world, rewrite their records, yet in the end the events that transpired are burned into her mind. Cobalt blue eyes, copper colored skin, a voice saying her name like a half whispered prayer. She has never forgotten him.

She's tried, for whatever that's worth. It's like a thick layer of ink on her hands that can't be washed away, a stain that won't come off, and it infuriates her. She can hack any computer, disguise herself as anyone she wants to be, save the school and be home by dinner, and she can't keep herself sane. By now she's supposed to have moved on entirely. She's supposed to be living life instead of enduring it. Everything was supposed to go away. That's why they moved. A new start, a new life, nobody who knew what she'd done. And maybe that worked for her sister, maybe it might've worked for her father, but it couldn't work for her. She couldn't cry tears like other people might, didn't know how to sob and hurt and heal, so she lashed out at the world. She rebelled, yelled, fought, scowled at the world she no longer believed in, because it kept back all the tears and the pain. Nobody understood. They kept moving from place to place until, finally, like sun breaking through the clouds, she met Fillmore.

He understood. He knew that it was easier to turn disappointment and pain into anger than it was to face the truth. He'd spent the better part of his entire life doing just that. His record was a sea of misdirected insanity until he'd been saved by his partner. In turn he'd saved her from herself, from this self destructive path she was willingly walking just to spite herself. Fillmore didn't have to know the cause of everything to see the effect of it written in her actions as clear as graffiti on a bathroom stall. Ingrid liked Fillmore from the moment she met him. He cared in a way that was more genuine and fierce than anyone else she knew. Somehow he seemed like the one real person in a sea of fakes. Middle school was no stranger to that problem, liars, cliques, fakes, shallow and gossiping people who didn't understand her or want to. Fillmore was one in a million. Losing him would be too much to take. Lying to him was like digging a knife into her own chest and twisting it.

"Ingrid, you okay?"

"I'm fine."

Her partner lowered his eyebrows, skeptical and serious. "No, you're not. When Folsom said that about you being mature your dad looked like he was going to be sick. What's going on?"

"Nothing's going on. It's just something that happened before. Leftover from my delinquent days. Folsom couldn't have known my family's inner references." She shrugged in what she hoped was a careless fashion. "Doesn't matter anyway."

He put a hand on her shoulder. For a moment she was a million miles away, in a time that seemed like a dream, being interrogated by a completely different concerned friend. Funny how people and places changed and yet friendship remained the same. If she closed her eyes right now and didn't inhale too deeply she could pretend this was the past, back when everything made sense. She looked over at her partner, trying to focus on the moment. Fillmore had a way of looking concerned and solemn without ever showing his eyes to her. She didn't read people well, normally, yet he was clear as a bell to her. Just like _he_ had been, a lifetime ago. She wasn't entirely comfortable with that similarity.

"Ingrid, you're lying. Why are you trying to block me out? Look, if this is about your past, you know you can talk to me about it. I don't exactly have a spotless record myself," he added, a note of self deprecation in his voice. "Just don't try to dodge the question. It's not like you."

"Fillmore…" She looked at him, lost for words, indecisive and trapped in a vortex of conflicting emotions. Shutting her eyes to clear her head proved to be a bad idea as everything rushed through her, photographic memory a curse she never could escape. "I…"

Sobbing, scared and terrified, his bright sapphire eyes begging for forgiveness even as the words tumbled out of his lips, he shook with regret and fear. Fear of rejection, hate, losing the only person who'd ever understood him. She reached out and took his hand, her isabelline hued skin contrasting against his even in the dim lighting. Reaching out, wrapping her arms around his warm body, she heard his heart hammering in his chest as he hesitantly returned the embrace. "What have I done?" he whispered, a question and a plea for rationality. "My God, what have I done?"

Blinking, she realized Fillmore had been speaking to her for several seconds. He looked worried. "I, uh, I'll see you later. I need to get home, figure out an outfit for the whole ceremony thing."

She was in the car and the door was shut before he could respond. She waited until he was out of sight to bury her head in her hands, muttering something about a headache to her father, shutting the world out by using her photographic memory to recall the entirety of the musical _Wicked_ for the ride home. The ride had never seemed so long, nor had the distance to her bed seemed so far. Collapsing onto it, she clutched the blankets and buried her face in them, trying to chase out the memories with smells and textures. When this failed, she waited until she heard her father's footsteps retreat into his study before going to the kitchen cupboard. Top shelf, way in the back, there were the sleeping pills; being a genius at least had the advantage of giving her the ability to calculate how much of a dosage she needed and could handle safely. Who said biology was a useless class?

Sprawled out on the bed, she didn't dream or think until the alarm went off the next day, and the nightmare that was her life resumed.

* * *

The part that sickened her father was that she didn't regret it.

She regretted how it ended. But she didn't regret committing the crime. She had felt, for the first time since her mother died, like she wasn't alone in the world and if doing morally questionable things was what it took to keep that bond intact she'd do it. There was a closeness that came with getting into trouble that nothing could ever match. There was a kind of security that came from knowing she had someone she could rely on that Fillmore referred to as the high he got from running with a crew. The phrase seemed very apt; just apply it to two instead of a group, and that was life then. The world made sense back in those days, there was some kind of hope for the future in her, and the gravity of everything didn't hit her until after it was too late. She didn't understand. She understood more than she should have, though, wasn't supposed to be an accomplice to this kind of crime willingly. Ingrid had spent many nights turning the events over in her head, looking at her mistakes in great detail, and the worst ones were the ones she wouldn't take back if she could. The whole complicated mess was hard even for her to figure out. So she didn't, shoving it into the back of her mind as often as she could.

Fillmore had on a suit, smiling warmly at her as birds chirped around them, singing in the morning sun. For a moment it was all alright. Everything was as it should be. She always felt like that when he was with her. Together they were an unstoppable force. Where one faltered the other would not. His presence had a calming effect so long as she didn't let her mind wander. Soon she'd shove the past under the mental bed and spend a month or two not thinking about it, though the perpetual feeling of needing to make up for the past would never leave. That desire was a stain on her heart that Fillmore had seen a long time before she had. In a way she was grateful he was in her life, though she'd never have guessed she'd end up on the Safety Patrol before she met him. Maybe it was a good thing that he altered her life's path. Without him she'd just have kept going from school to school until there was none left or she hit college, whichever came first. He looked at her, normalcy and stability incarnate, and the black haired girl smiled back warmly.

"You mom dressed you, didn't she?" Ingrid asked, smirking as he blushed and opened his mouth to object. "Photographic memory. You don't own anything this color coordinated or tailored."

"Ingrid, what did we agree about using your powers for evil?" Fillmore chided as they looped arms and entered the auditorium. She grinned at him. He always made life seem so much more sane than it actually was.

The ceremony went well, more or less. Accept award, thank parents and teachers, bow, walk off stage. Ingrid and Fillmore went through it on autopilot at this point. Vainer people might've tried to make epic speeches or tearful tirades on the poetic justice of the world, but the Safety Patrol as a whole agreed that Folsom did that enough for everybody. Indeed, she went to town on this year's speech on rising like a phoenix and soaring like eagles, all the while everyone grew increasingly distracted. By the time they got through all the awards for the school's clubs, three hours had passed and the band playing the ending theme was met with raucous applause by everyone, parents and students alike. Even the most serious teachers were glad to get to the Spring Fling and all that entailed after all the awards and names began to blend together. Ingrid observed Ms. Asaji, the Advanced History teacher, high fiving Anza as the band exited and they were finally allowed to leave. Nudging Fillmore, she gestured with her head towards the unusually ecstatic looking teacher. He snorted.

Everything felt normal. Everything felt like it was supposed to – light hearted, warm, a time for pranks and romance and that most cherished middle school past time, gossip. Patrollers stood together in clumps, passing down stories from the old veterans about to enter high school to the lowly cadets not yet sworn in. Cliques hung out in corners, peals of laughter and hushed whispers betraying their conversation even as they struggled to keep looking cool. X was one of few schools big enough to justify having a football sized building just for dances; the Décor Club looked pleased with their job this year. Fillmore and Ingrid sat on the bleachers, strategically placed to allow people a break from the dance when they were tired. X was so big as to forcibly require three separate dances on the same day, for each grade of students at their school; sixth, seventh and eighth. Unfortunately, between the required award ceremony beforehand and being assigned to keep the peace during the last shift of the dance, it was honestly easier for them just to stay here all day.

Fillmore gave Ingrid a wicked grin. "According to the clock," he gestured to the glowing clock embedded in the ceiling, "It's show time."

Less than four seconds later, the DJ called out, "This next song goes out to a certain Danny O., from all your friends at the Safety Patrol."

Her tea green eyes went wide as Avenue Q's _If You Were Gay_ started up. Then any response she might've had was drowned out by the Safety Patrol's uncontrollable laughter. Although the teachers were supposed to stop this kind of thing, their reactions varied from amusement to feigned inability to hear the music. Somewhere in the mix Ingrid could hear Danny's indignant shouts as Anza grabbed his hands and began singing the lyrics to him with unabashed sincerity. Vallejo fell off the bleacher he was on at the sight. Silently, Ingrid and Fillmore high fived without taking their eyes off the spectacle. Even the normally angry Folsom was trying not to smile. For a moment Ingrid felt like she wasn't anything she wasn't supposed to be, like everything was right and normal, and it was easy to truly forget what a gunshot sounded like from point blank range and what blood looked like on snow.

Anza, still laughing and smiling devilishly as the song ended, sat down beside them, took one look at Fillmore and burst out laughing. They gave each other satisfied, mission accomplished looks that made Tehama roll her eyes as she stood beside them, shaking her head.

"We're going to hell for this, aren't we?" Anza asked, far too pleased with this for his partner's liking. She gave him a disapproving look.

Fillmore made some kind of joke in response, and Ingrid got up to leave, saying something about going to the bathroom. Over the beginning blasting beats of Pao Fu Nu Hao by Liu Yi Fei exact words couldn't be discerned and she had no desire to clarify her statement, going down the stairs to the basement that held the bathrooms, a few barely used classrooms and most importantly privacy. Her footsteps echoed on the gray tile as the music became an unintelligible throb above her. The faint lavender scent of the bathroom didn't register as she pushed open the door, found a stall and locked herself in it. Leaning up against the chilly stall walls, she focused her gaze of the ceiling lights whose buzz could be heard over the upstairs commotion. Breathe, she told herself, breathe. Now was no time to lose her mind.

"I'm going to hell now, aren't I?" he'd whispered, dejected and mournful., knees to his chest as he sat huddled on the floor. "And I dragged you with me. I'm so sorry. I never meant to do this, any of it." His eyes were dull under the fluorescent lights of the empty hallway, glaucous like the sky after a horrific storm. His hair was out of its normal low ponytail at the base of his neck, and fell around his heart shaped face haphazardly, a battered curtain of seal brown. "I wish you'd hate me like I deserve."

She had reached out to him then, not liking the defeat and weariness in his young features. He was trying to take all the blame because he was older than her. He felt responsible for everything that happened. Ingrid understood as only an eight year old with an IQ of 143 could that it was perfectly normal psychology in the midst of abnormal events. What she didn't know, what no textbook could teach, was how to comfort him, how to say I'm sorry too, and this is my fault just like it's yours. There were no magic words that was going to make everything right again. He'd been broken even before she met him. Wrapping her arms around him, pressing close, she felt him take in a shuddering, gasping breath before he relaxed into the embrace of the only friend he'd ever had.

"Aleph…" Ingrid whispered in the here and now, mind replaying the memory to her like a movie reel. It was a stupid movie with dumb kids who should've known better, an idealistic heroine who couldn't really be called that and a hero whose backstory alone should've made the movie rated R. If her life were a book, she wouldn't be old enough to read it and there'd be a sticker on the back that said Mature Audiences Only.

She heard the bathroom door open, knew the sound of Fillmore's sturdy and surprisingly fast footsteps by heart. Ingrid could picture the businesslike scowl on his face, the way his eyebrows huddled down when he was worried, the small crease in his forehead. Photographic memory was a curse that plagued her ever since those first preschool days where she'd been able to explain it. Pictures, visions, words, moments playing through her head, a neverending parade of all her life's failures that she couldn't escape from. Sometimes she wished she could forget things. Normal people didn't realize what a gift it was to let time heal their wounds, let their minds warp events to take away the harshness of reality. She never had that. She could never forget the way the ambulance's alarm seemed to dig into her skull or the hopeless look in Aleph's eyes as the last of his willpower broke.

Weakly, Ingrid smiled up at her partner, a fake expression that didn't suit her. "Hey. Uh… how long was I gone?" Fillmore didn't chase after her every few minutes, after all.

"A while. Ingrid," he asked, looking serious, "Who's Aleph?"

"No one."

Just the only person who ever really mattered.


	3. Chapter 3

Author's Note: I admit it, we're info-dumping _hard_ in this chapter – but Ingrid isn't telling Fillmore everything. There are still hints everywhere as to the crucial part she's leaving out, though. Hopefully it's subtle enough not to be a flashing neon sign going 'this is the plot!'. Also, building off of Ingrid's substantial canon vocabulary and the fact that her photographic memory extends to reading, I'm having her use bigger words than average. I hope I'm not coming across as yet another annoying author running around throwing out odd words to make myself sound oh so smart. If it comes across as pretentious, I'm sincerely sorry.

* * *

The worst part was when they'd made the news.

More accurately, _he'd_ made the news. Aleph was already a wreck, bloody, muddy and messy, but when he saw the news he didn't fall apart so much as he just shut down entirely. He stared at the TV like it was a foreign concept to him, watching the last twenty four hours being explained clinically and coldly by a newscaster. It was then that perhaps they both realized just how deeply in trouble they were; across the room, ZJ looked steadily downward, gritting his teeth. He looked about as bad as they did, with a still bleeding wound on his face that was probably going to become a permanent scar. Ingrid glanced between the two boys and felt her heart sink.

"We got double crossed." ZJ shook his head, his dirty blonde hair catching the dim light of his apartment. The ten year old boy managed to look years older, stress and weariness giving his voice the weight of an adult's. "I'd normally say something witty here, but we don't have time. The cops are probably working their way here as we speak. All I need to know is this: is it true?"

Ingrid and Aleph looked at each other, looked away, and winced. Their guilty faces said it all.

ZJ swore, kicking at the couch and shaking his head. "You really dug your own grave this time, didn't you Al? And what the hell were you thinking, Ingrid? God, you two were supposed to be the mature ones in this group!"

They really needed to move, quickly. If they'd been ratted out then this wasn't the time or the place for this. ZJ glared them down, eyes topaz and sharp even in the dim lighting. His hands were shaking slightly, which for him was the worst sign possible. He always yelled. He was always the loudest person in any given room. When he got quiet things had truly gone horribly wrong. When the group's loudest complainer didn't have words that meant they'd really crossed a line. In that moment he could have walked out on them and Ingrid wouldn't have blamed him. They'd lied to him, done stupid and reckless things and to top it all off they'd showed up here expecting him to save their sorry butts from their own mess. He stood there before them a vision of contradictions; anger and relief, betrayal and love, the desire to turn them in and the need to see them safe. In the end, the latter of each category won out and he directed them with a jerk of his head to follow him to his brother's hotwired and waiting car.

It was about then that Ingrid realized just how deep a hole they'd gotten themselves into.

"Ingrid, please. Don't block me out. You can talk to me about anything, you know that," Fillmore said softly, watching her every movement. "I just need to know what's going on."

"Nothing, right now. It's all in the past. And that's the problem." She couldn't look him in the eye, so she settled for looking at the floor briefly. "But nobody can change that. I'm just overreacting. I'm tired. Took too much Oselpax last night-"

"Oselpax? Is that even legal in this state? Where did you-"

"My sister has a prescription for it. Look, can we drop this?"

"No, we can't," Fillmore snapped, with more intensity than she'd seen in him in a long time. "Ingrid, I've told you everything about me, about who I used to be. There are things that you know that my own parents don't. Don't try to back out on me now. And don't pull that 'it's no big deal' card. I _know_ you. You don't have freak outs over nothing."

"We're not talking about this in a school rest room, Cornelius." And it would buy her time to throw together some kind of decision, although she'd really had a long time in which she could've done that before. "People could walk in on us and I have no desire to have my face plastered all over the newspapers ever again."

He paused, looking contemplative. "Is it… is it really that bad?"

"Yeah." She met his eyes, looking suddenly exhausted. "It is. Can we go somewhere? Somewhere private, since we're still off shift… not off campus, though…"

"There's a secondary basement in this building, right? Underneath the health room?" Fillmore smirked faintly. "I know you can pick the lock on the door. C'mon."

Ingrid was, when she wanted to be, a very good liar. A good liar could've come up with a cover story, something convincing and dramatic but not as bad as the truth. Maybe if she'd had more time to think it over she would've come up with something. Maybe if she'd had more time to think it over she'd have decided to lie instead of tell the truth, or she'd have started with the truth and ended with a lie. Yet the genius girl simply didn't have it in her; as hard as it was to tell the truth, it was harder to keep lying. Lying created walls between her and everyone around her. The truth had admittedly done the same with her family. There was no clear right thing to do, so she went with what felt right. And it felt right to trust Fillmore with her secrets. He wasn't like other boys, he was deep and thoughtful, moral and compassionate, the closest thing to a real hero she'd ever had in her life.

Not that these thoughts made it any easier to confess. She'd been holding the whole truth in for so long that putting it into words was nearly impossible. Everyone had bits and pieces of the truth. The police had things on the record that were true, her father had assumptions that were true, and yet mixed everywhere were the lies she'd had to tell to keep the scandal level to a minimum. She had been eight, almost nine, and she knew that they didn't think she was smart enough to be able to fool the cops and the lie detector test. Ingrid had never really told the full truth to anyone, just fragments. ZJ came closest to knowing the whole of the ordeal. His reaction had been a mix of repulsion, disgust, disappointment and maybe something close to begrudging partial forgiveness in the end. Not acceptance. Never that. No one accepted it, they just directed their hatred at Aleph under the logic that his age meant he bore all the responsibility. They all thought of Ingrid as an innocent wide eyed little girl who didn't know what she was getting into.

Fillmore didn't see her as that. He saw her as an equal. He knew she'd never been an idiot, an idealist or a fool. Nobody could fool Ingrid Third for long and if she was sufficiently motivated there wasn't anything she couldn't have. He knew her weaknesses, too, her desire to have friends, her insecurity, her constant need to investigate everything that made her come across paranoid. Fillmore saw her for who she was and that was what scared her. If she lost that, such a bond would take years to find in someone else, if she ever found a friendship like this again at all. Trust had never been her forte. Oh, she trusted her little group back in the day to carry out their part of the plan, but that was purely business. Emotional investment, trusting someone with her secrets and being really genuine and honest in front of them – that was the hard part. The last person she'd been like that with was Aleph. She took a deep breath and decided to start from there.

"Aleph Atamaza was the first real friend I ever had. We didn't look like the kind of kids who should have been able to go an hour without killing each other, though. I was seven when I first met him, angry at my mother's death and lashing out at everything and everyone. He was fourteen, tired of life and three seconds away from jail at any given moment. The kind of kid who destroyed things just so that the chaos would make him feel something… I was kind of like that, too, only I wanted to cause havoc so that it would get rid of the pain inside. Not that we understood our own motivations; basic psychology says that others problems are always a lot clearer than our own, and that was really true for us. We kind of kept each other for going completely insane. We made each other laugh. We came up with pranks together. His cousin ZJ – that's Zachary James, for the record – he made everything so much more bearable. Such a loud mouth and a smart aleck, always knee deep in trouble and completely unsupervised."

Fillmore smiled at her fond tone. "Those were the days, huh?"

"Yeah," she agreed. "Everything seemed to make sense back then. ZJ had a step brother, though, and he was kind of the reason everything fell apart. He wasn't sane. There was something really off about him. I don't know how to explain it. He never seemed to really be relaxed, so he got labeled Jitters and just sort of tagged along on everything. Jitters wasn't really part of the group but he was useful when we needed a look out and I think we all felt sorry for him. He was bullied, badly, beaten up five times in one year." She waved a hand vaguely at nothing in particular, looking around the sub-basement's lengthy hallways. "You know how it is. Better to have an annoying kid hang out with you than to have him beaten up and alone. We were maniacal trouble makers, not monsters. But he was the reason it all fell apart."

He nodded, aiming the flashlight at the dark corners where mice lurked. "A crew's only as strong as their weakest link. I'm guessing he turned on you when things got to be too much for him."

"Well, to be fair," Ingrid said with a resigned sigh, "He kind of had a point. He just blamed Aleph, though. Everybody did. Even though I was the one who started it."

She remembered the sullen silence in the car as they drove, not knowing where they were going. There was barely controlled fury identifiable in ZJ's body language, and he hadn't stopped shaking his head and sighing since they'd gotten in. Aleph was past caring about what happened to himself at this point. He hadn't even wiped at the assorted filth covering him, the blood now dried on his face like oddly arranged war paint. His eyes had a distinctly dead look to them as he turned to look the blonde in the eye as best they could manage mid-drive. The blonde behind the wheel looked at him and sighed again, a frustrated semi-groan that suited him well.

"Zachary… please, I need you to do something for me. Please. For Ingrid." Aleph leaned over, deliberately not looking at the girl in the back seat. "I know you can never forgive me for this. I'm not asking you to. Just make sure that when the cops ask that you say I'm the mastermind. I'm the planner, the pervert, the demon – whatever they need me to be. The manipulator and the sociopath. That has to be me if Ingrid's going to make it out of this in tact. I'm the monster here. I'm the one who gets the people I claim to love hurt."

"Aleph-" Ingrid started, but he talked over her.

"Jitters had every right to turn me in. You were thinking of doing it too. Ingrid was thinking of turning me in. She's an innocent little girl caught up in things way too big for her to understand. I'm a ruthless freak. You all saw it coming and everyone was powerless to stop it because I'm so unstable you didn't know what I was going to do next. Under no circumstances do you deviate from this story. You gave me a ride because I had a gun. I'm a dangerous psychopath. Everybody got that?"

Ingrid was shaking, now. "Aleph, don't do this." She looked to ZJ, desperately. "You can't let him do this! It was my fault! I started it! I was the one who got us together – I was the one who pulled the trigger – I was the one who set the fire-"

"No, you weren't." Aleph's voice was low and he was hanging his head, face obscured by his hair. "The truth isn't about facts. It's about telling people what they want to hear. Truth is just a word for what we're allowed to know. Stick to the story, Ingrid, and never say what actually happened. It'll keep you safe."

"But it's a lie!" she had half screamed, smacking the seat of the car in frustration. "That's not what happened!"

"Lying," Aleph whispered as the car started to slow to a halt, "Is how people survive this life. I won't take you down with me, Ingrid." He leaned towards the back of the car to embrace her gently, with a finality that scared her. "Thank you, though. For trying to save me. It's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all."

And then he pulled away, stepped out of the car, and vanished into the dim evening light.

"Ingrid, I swear to God, if you drift off like this one more time I'm hauling you up to the nurse's office," Fillmore threatened, snapping her back to the present. "You're acting… kind of like me whenever people give me flak over my record. But I'm in no position to judge. Just spill. You know I've had my share of moments I wish I could do over."

For a long moment she simply watched his face, thoughtful and quiet. Then she asked, never breaking eye contact, "What if I don't want a do-over, Fillmore? What if I still think what I did was right, and if I could do it over the only thing I'd change is getting caught?"

"Then I'd want to know why you did it, because depending on that answer you could be all over the sliding scale of ration versus logic," he replied softly, his voice more curious than judgmental. He gestured for her to keep talking.

"Ever since Aleph could remember, his father hurt him. He… Fillmore, even when Aleph was just a little kid… he couldn't fight back and he couldn't anyone tell since nobody was listening and he didn't even understand what sex _was_…"

The black boy's jaw dropped. She thought she heard him inhale sharply. At his side, the hand not currently occupied holding a flashlight curled into a tight fist. "You mean…" He shuddered, scowling. "That's just sick."

"Aleph had nowhere else to go. We all know how bad the foster care system can be. He just let the world slowly break him and he put up with everything. He acted like he didn't care when he did. He cared about me, about his cousin, even about his drunk of an uncle. He wanted everybody to be happy and instead life just kept getting worse until finally everything just sort of reached its breaking point when he…" She winced like she'd been struck at the photographic memory's curse, images she wished she could unsee. "He found his mother's body, in the basement. And his father was going to kill him too, or at least we thought he was. We were scared and alone but we were best friends for nearly two years at that point and I wasn't going to just sit back and do nothing."

Flashes of memory rushed up to greet her. Hiding in the forest, with no plan or resources, only each other. She was the strong one, then, which was strange. He'd always been the comforter in the midst of her grief and anger. He was the one who treated her like a person and never faltered to back her up and defend her from bullies. For all the beatings and sneers that those actions had earned him, though, he had never been like this. Despite all the guilt they'd shared in the past, that was just a given when they were living in sin and they'd managed to work through it. This, though, he couldn't get over with time and hugs. This was different. This was breaking him, shaking him to the core. In his shaking, frosty hands he clutched his mother's scarf. Ingrid hadn't been able to touch the corpse, too disgusted and shaken by it. Aleph had collapsed beside her, whispering to her in Spanish and crying out what Ingrid thought sounded like apologies. Then he'd gently lifted the scarf from her body with growing horror as he realized it had been used to strangle her. The snow was soaking him through to the bone and there was blood from the body of someone they couldn't identify on him, but all Ingrid could focus on was the horror on his face.

"Aleph kept saying, 'this should not be happening, this should not be happening' over and over again. I could see my best friend falling apart right in front of me. I couldn't stop it. There was nothing I could do other than watch him break. So I did something really reckless and horrible. It was stupid, dangerous, and I'm going straight to Hell for it and I… I don't really regret it because I know that if I hadn't done it, there would've been more bodies in that basement later on."

"Oh my God, Ingrid, you…" Fillmore removed his glasses, looking directly at her as if trying to confirm the nightmare he was hearing was indeed real. His eyes, which she'd always expected were black-brown, were instead ecru, caught between gold and gray. She met his eyes and was surprised to note that there were tears in her own. "Ingrid, that's not on your record."

"Of course it's not," she half sobbed, half snarled. "Aleph took all the blame and everyone remembers him as a monster. The world thinks he used me to get to a gun. That's not what happened. The factual inaccuracies were all purposefully planned and planted so that I could play up my obfuscating age to get through it with no consequences. Then when he had all the fabricated evidence in place and he knew ZJ and I would stick to his story, he knew without any uncertainty that the town would blame him. Unpopular kid equals target. You and I both know how that works; labels stick. So nobody ever questioned it when he wrote up a fake confession, laid down and pulled the trigger on himself. Nobody knows it's all my fault and it was my idea. There was some suspicion when I first made the news, but… history decides what happened."

"Damn. Ingrid, I can't imagine what all this is like. For what it's worth," Fillmore added intensely, "I think that it wasn't the _best_ decision you could've made, you're gonna have to deal with this for a long time, and a call to the cops should've been in order, but – you were eight. You were scared. Abused kids don't think clearly under those kind of circumstances. You did what you thought was the right thing at the time. It's like what they told us in Basic Psychology. Everybody does the best they can considering the circumstances."

"I did it," she said flatly. "Not Aleph. If I hadn't done it he'd still be alive right now. If I'd done it better like the remarkable little genius everyone proclaimed me to be he'd be alive and in a good foster home right now. If, utilizing my IQ of one hundred and seventy, I had decided to pick up the freaking _telephone_, he would still be alive!" What had started out as an almost clinical statement had, by the end, turned into a near shout that made her grateful for the soundproof nature of the entire building. "I had a hundred better options at my fingertips, a thousand ways to stop a tragedy in process, and instead I acted like a self righteous blood knight a la Templar and systematically ruined everyone's life! Sentence first, verdict afterward!"

In the wake of this uncharacteristic outburst, all he could come up with in response was, "Was that Shakespeare?"

She sank to the stone floor, looking suddenly drained of all energy as if confessing had physically taken everything she had. "Lewis Carroll, actually."

Slowly, Fillmore sat down beside her. He was hesitant, watchful and quiet. In the silence he slowly began to see the problem in a way only someone with true doubts could. Some part of Ingrid knew that monsters like Aleph's father needed to be taken down. After seeing the bodies the part of her that said murder was wrong was no longer functioning. Shocked and stunned, angry and afraid in ways Fillmore could barely imagine, she'd used the only weapon an eight year old could to do what she thought was right. And some part of her didn't regret _that_ – didn't regret that she'd ended the life of someone who'd done such awful things. That in itself would always trouble her, knowing that she was capable of doing that without really regretting it. What did that make her? Yet her mind was sharp enough to bring forth an entirely different kind of regret, the thought that she could have done everything better and saved everyone. She regretted it and wouldn't take it back, thought she was wrong and right at the same time. It gave him a headache just thinking about it.

Being a genius wasn't fun. Photographic memory wasn't fun. These two things together were maddening. This duality had made it impossible to be treated the way she needed to be, like an adult. People acted like she was a smart little kid, a clever dog who did a lot of tricks. Even Folsom was guilty of that attitude. So maybe playing along with the lie was easy intellectually for Ingrid. It was still a nightmare emotionally. Genius didn't mean inhuman. Genius simply meant smarter than normal human, with all the feelings and trauma normal people would've had coming out of the situation. Unfortunately, being as smart as she was meant she couldn't stop thinking about the thing in horrific, logical and scientific detail. Her age meant that any counselor she went to would treat her as if she were a lot less mature than she actually was. She was trapped in her own head.

"Oh, Ingrid," He took her hand and squeezed it gently. "It's never left you, has it? Photographic memory. Your brain is like a tape recorder that can't be erased. And you never had anyone who you could tell it all to. My God, I can't imagine how alone you must feel all the time. My dad says that back when he was a rookie officer on the force, when he saw the first dead body everything changed. And he at least had the advantage of being twenty three at the time." He shook his head, shuddering. "But Ingrid? You're not alone now. I'm here. I promise you, I'm not going anywhere."

She turned to look at him. Her eyes were exhausted and somehow seemed more befitting an old woman than a middle school student. Tone a mixture of sadness, fondness and disappointment, she replied solemnly, "Aleph made that promise, too."

There was no response to that. They stared at the walls and shadows in the dim yellow beam of the flash light, silent.


	4. Chapter 4

Author's Notes: At the end of this chapter, we will have officially crossed into dark and squicky territory. Not that the proceeding chapters were light and fluffy, but I swear _I can envision the flames already_. This fanfics is really a sign I'm way too into darkfic for my own good, isn't it?

Sorry for the delay between chapters, but if you're familiar with my work, you're probably used to it by now. I'm really bad at sticking to schedules, huh? XD

* * *

It occurred to Fillmore that the kids of X didn't really know what abuse was like.

They complained about curfews, about not being allowed to join every single club they wanted or, God forbid, getting into trouble when they failed a class. They thought detention was torture and parents that didn't drop everything to come pick up their precious child when they were obviously faking illness were despised. But none of these kids knew what it was like to really be thoroughly abused. A portion of them had what the media liked to dub parental abandonment – their parents were never home and they were all alone – and some of them had one parent or lived with grandparents. None of them knew what it was like to have a murderer as a father. They'd never seen the mangled and decaying body of their only loving parent thrown away like a piece of trash.

Fillmore tried to picture Aleph Atamaza. He pictured bruises and scratches, a fake smile and blood. He wondered if the teachers had all just been too stupid to identify the marks or if they'd just ignored the signs of abuse. He wondered if maybe the neighbors hadn't seen something and how different, he thought, would it have all gone down had they reported the woman missing? The husband would've been the suspect, Fillmore knew that much from having a cop for a father. Maybe it all could've been salvaged, halted before the situation spiraled out of control if someone had just picked up the phone and called the cops before the woman went missing in the first place. Didn't anyone hear the screams of pain or see the psychological fallout? Didn't any of the other kids ever stop and ask Aleph what was wrong? Didn't anyone ever ask where the bruises and injuries came from?

Didn't anyone _care_?

Even when he'd been a thug Fillmore would have called someone. He would have told a teacher. He wouldn't have listened to reasoning about the faulty and abusive foster care system. Anything was better than the alternative. He would have been a raging, righteous fury engulfed mess that no one would have been able to stop. However, this was how he'd have been as an eleven year old thug or a ten year old hellion. At seven years old he wouldn't even comprehend what Aleph was enduring. At seven he'd need an explanation of what sex was followed by an explanation of how sex worked between guys. At that age he knew it was something married people did because they loved each other and it was rumored to involve cooties. This, though, went against all loving and caring instincts and didn't have even a pretense of affection or care behind it. It was sadism, pure and simple. Fillmore didn't know how he'd have reacted to it back then since he'd never been in a position to find out. At seven and eight years old his world was all about playing pranks, getting into trouble and playing basketball. No matter how much trouble he got into, though, his father had never raised a hand against him. For all the flaws of the Fillmore family, they were never violent.

He tried to imagine his father hitting him. Or his mother. He couldn't come up with the mental image. Fathers were nagging, advice dispensing creatures that seemed to think everything was better back in the good old days. There was no way he could ever envision his dad hitting anyone unless it was in a fight with some criminal or boxing. It would have to be self defense. His dad could take him in a fight. He just wouldn't out of decency and morality and love. Where was the love in the Atamaza family? Where was that paternal instinct that made biological children so precious to their parents or that bond that made spouses each other's better half? In lieu of that, where the heck were the basic unwritten rules of American combat? Whatever happened to not picking a fight with someone less than half your age and not striking a child unless said child was armed with a weapon? As far as the sex went, whatever happened to consent, to say nothing of the age old half your age plus seven rule? Why hadn't Mrs. Atamaza taken her son and run away? The answer was obvious - there was nowhere to go, no one to run to, no compassionate outreach programs they could rely on. They had been trapped.

He was going to make himself sick if he kept thinking about this. But that was the problem, wasn't it? Ingrid's mind worked faster than anyone else's, always coming up with ideas and processing things at lightning speed. She was trapped in the past in way he couldn't imagine. He was grateful that they had a few hours before their shift officially started. The weight of confession seemed to have taken everything she had, leaving her exhausted and more vulnerable than he'd ever seen her. In the barely present light they watched a curious mouse run up to them and run away every time they so much as twitched, intrigued by the humans yet fearful as to what they could do. Maybe, he thought grimly, animals had a point on that front.

"Fillmore?"

"Hm?"

"Why aren't you mad at me? I did the worst thing a human being is capable of doing." She managed to sound tired and angry at herself at the same time.

"Because… you're like my sister. I think it was wrong, but if you didn't have trouble getting over it you'd be a sociopath. You gotta realize that you were just a kid. You didn't think it through."

"Stop making excuses for me!" She snapped, eyes flashing in annoyance. "I swear, you and Aleph would've gotten along just great. Rationalizing everything so that I'm never to blame was something he was fantastic at, too. You could at least have the decency to be _upset_, you know."

"Fine!" Fillmore threw up his hands, exasperated. "You messed up! You killed someone! You did a bunch of things that make me feel sick and it's all your fault! Is that what you want to hear? Do you wanna be yelled at and blamed for everything? I'll do whatever you need, Ingrid. Whatever it takes to get you through this, I can roll with. But until you tell me what you want I'm stumped. What do you want from me?"

"I don't know anymore," Ingrid replied, dejected. "I don't know. It's all too much to bear. And it's not the despair I can't take – the despair I can live with. It's the hope I can't stand."

"Is that another literary reference we lowly peons are incapable of getting?"

"Consider it payback for all the Bone Thugs In Harmony references you and Sonny have made ever since he reformed. It's like you're speaking Catalan around the rest of us." She smiled weakly at his attempt to lighten the mood. "Thanks for putting up with me, Cornelius. I think I just needed someone to listen to me. Maybe one day life will stop feeling like a nonstop atonement run."

"You just gotta take it one day at a time. I'm here for you, you know what I mean? No matter how after school special it seems, you aren't alone." He rubbed the back of his neck, nervously. "Not saying I can make it all magically better, but at least give honesty a shot. Consider me your prepaid therapist."

"I can sit on your bed and you can sit in a little chair with a notebook, asking, 'how does that make you feel?' ad nauseaum." She leaned her head on his shoulder. "Our dates are so romantic."

"Between that and the time we went to the all weekend long Movie Horrorthon? I'm like a black Romeo." He smiled faintly, then frowned suddenly. "Wait, hold up. How did Jitters know to call the cops on you if it wasn't premeditated murder? If he was just randomly sending cops after you, the odds of it happening at just that moment are slim to none." He inhaled sharply, a theory he didn't particularly care for dawning on him. "He was turning you two in for something else, wasn't he?"

_Yes._ "What makes you so sure he wasn't turning in Aleph's dad?"

"He'd have done that before if he was gonna. No reason to go behind your backs to do it." Fillmore's eyes were locked onto her face, studying her every twitch. "There's something else, isn't there? Your dad wouldn't have gotten all tense over the maturity reference for murder. Ingrid, what really happened?"

"Everything I told you. I didn't lie, I just didn't tell the whole truth," she admitted, growing increasingly anxious. "It's… complicated. And messed up. As you've gathered from what I've told you, nothing in Aleph's life was normal or sane or good. I tried to be there for him, but I guess I wasn't enough to keep everything from going wrong. I tried, though. I just wanted my best friend to be happy and I couldn't even do _that_. Some genius I turned out to be."

"Ingrid, what-"

"You can't figure it out?" she asked, self hatred and vitriol in her voice. "It's not obvious? Good lord, I just wish someone would put the pieces together and realize the truth for once. I wish someone would just sit me down and tell me it's obvious that I'm messed up and give me the reasons why and tell me how to fix myself. I wish that I could just go back and get a do-over so things would be okay. I never should've kissed Aleph in the first place."

"Never should have- oh," Fillmore said, making the connection in his head. "Oh."

"Yeah." She looked over at him grimly. "I'm waiting for the 'he was a pervert and he tricked you' spiel followed by the inevitable suggestion for therapy."

Ingrid remembered she really was the one who started it, no matter what anybody said. She was the one who had been more affectionate towards her newfound friend than her own family, the one who'd spent whole nights whispering away on walkie talkies and the one who'd gotten him in the habit of sharing food off the same plate. The entire relationship was founded out of some kind of need she had to have someone who didn't treat her like an idiot and his need not to be so utterly alone anymore. Aleph wouldn't have ever spoken to her, though. He was silent, sullen, an angry kid lashing out at the world, acting tough yet dying deep down underneath it all. She was the one who'd shown the tiniest ounce of compassion for the town's resident outcast and moody teenager. Ingrid had been the more verbal one, the strong one, in a way, someone he could lean on and confide in as if there wasn't any age difference at all between them. She was smarter than many of the girls in his own grade, in both book smarts and in that indescribable way, that ability to understand and feel empathy that most kids there seemed to lack.

She was the one who'd kissed him first, after gathering up all the courage she could muster. He'd been startled into silence, frozen, eyes wide. For a moment he looked conflicted, hesitantly leaning away, hands curling into fists reflexively. But she was gentle and soft. It didn't hurt like with his father. Closing his eyes he slowly moved forward to try it, feeling his heart hammering in his chest all the while, waiting for something to go wrong. When seconds ticked by and the world didn't erupt into chaos and violence, he uncurled his fists slowly and opened his eyes. Ingrid smiled lovingly at him as she wrapped her arms around him, snuggling up to him. For a second on that couch Aleph felt a spark of hope in him. Somebody wanted him, cared about him, and there was someone out there who didn't think he was filthy after what his father had done. He'd made the mistake of telling a few girls before and the rejections had left him feeling like he was tainted and dirty. Maybe, though, that wasn't true, or maybe it was and Ingrid had just looked past it. Either way, he smiled down at her and ran a hand through her hair, wondering if all kisses were supposed to be gentle like that. Everything was so different, so warm and perfect…

Admittedly, in retrospect the whole thing was rather dysfunctional. Not that either of them had much frame of reference for comparison. Ingrid knew that normal boyfriends weren't supposed to freak out over certain things, certain touches and certain places. Then again, normal boyfriends hadn't gone through what he had. It was okay. Everybody had problems. She loved him anyway. Aleph was beautiful, kind, patient, soft spoken and smart like she was. Nobody understood either of them, yet they understood each other perfectly from the day they met. Ingrid remembered all those wonderful moments where they weren't doing anything, just laying together watching TV or going swimming. Back then she'd thought that it would last forever, that everything would be golden like this until they grew up and got out of here. They'd move somewhere his father couldn't hurt him and have a house and a dog. She'd keep him safe. He was hers and she was his. They'd be okay.

"Okay, um, Ingrid?" Fillmore sounded uncertain. "You are aware that dating older guys at our age has a phenomenally high failure rate, right? Everybody who does that ends up breaking up."

"Since when has logic been part of my life?" she asked, and, sounding a tad bitter, added, "I thought I was smart enough that we would make it work somehow. I was the idealistic one in that particular pairing, even if that seems weird for me now. Things were different then. I really believed I could keep things from going wrong. But Aleph… after he found his mother's body… he was too broken by it. Something _snapped_, Fillmore, and I couldn't bring him out of it."

His eyes went wide. "Are you _crying_?" He swore under his breath and dove for a tissue in his pockets, handing her one. "Ingrid, it's not your fault." The white girl snorted at that, so he pressed on, "I mean it. Some people just can't take all of that overload. And I… I think I figured it out. Jitters turned Aleph in and lied to the police, didn't he? To make it look like he was some sick pedophile or something. Because he knew no one would ever come to Aleph's defense other than you." There was a note of bitterness in Fillmore's voice, then. "A poor person who's part of a minority is pretty much guilty until proven innocent to some cops…"

"That's close to what happened," the black haired girl nodded. "I wouldn't call it racism so much as the great American pedophile media witch hunt, but that's… almost entirely accurate." At the look Fillmore gave her, she took a deep breath. "Don't hate me for saying this, Fillmore, try to understand, it was my idea in the first place and I _thought_ I was helping. I'd read all these psychology books and I thought I knew what I was doing-"

The black boy cut her off by holding up a hand to silence her. "You're telling me that you two _had sex_?" His incredulous voice begged her for a 'no'.

But when he saw her sad smile, he knew the answer was yes.


End file.
